Author: Trilok Tourani

This post will take you through some interesting work that I have been doing for my project under FOSSASIA. This project is being done under the google summer of code platform. I have been working on various code scripts as my project is all about improving the tools of the sTeam collaboration platform. But this particular script is a command line interface that I am thrilled to work on.

If you are not familiar with what sTeam is, you can look it up here, sTeam

Let me start with how sTeam originally works for any user. This picture will give you a clear view about it.

If you are new to the sTeam platform, this script will take you through the sTeam commands and the interface, also making sure, you have fun in the process. It lets the user play with sTeam and get to know more about how it works. One other interesting concept that we have tried to integrate here is that of MUDs(Multi user dungeons/dimensions). Some of you may already be familiar with the concept of MUDs( others, please look it up here MUD). We have tried to bring the MUD kind of experience to this sTeam interface (like I said, thrilling!).

I have seen people go through a lot of tutorials on git, and the commands(sometimes complex) through which it operates, and yet, people have difficulty learning it. What if it had a MUD type of interaction, which would just let you type “create file” “commit file” “get commit content” “upload file” “rename file” “goto repo”, etc. Wouldnt it be much easier that way? Well, sTeam is going through all the extensive tool development so that it can make a user-friendly interaction. Here are some screenshots of this interface,

This interface is under heavy development and plans to make sTeam more and more interesting for its users. If you have any questions on sTeam, please feel free to contact me, or join us on our daily scrum meetings on IRC (#steam-devel) or join #fossasia and ping us with a question.

If you are looking for a open source project and want to contribute to FOSSASIA, Please have a look at FOSSASIA labs.

First of all, I really thank Google for organizing such an event for students in the summer and I am fortunate to be a part of such a program. I would also like to thank FOSSASIA for accepting my proposal for the project and for providing me with the experience of working with them.

When you see your name on the list

Name on the list? Google’s server being stacked up with lots and lots of request, Students impatiently clicking the refresh button to see whether their names are present in the list, a lot of students, a lot of projects, and suddenly, that one refresh, when the list loads with the projects matching the student names. (CTRL+F) ”Trilok Tourani” and there it was,

Organization : FOSSASIA

Project : Improve the command line tools of the sTeam collaboration platform

Dumbstruck for a minute, but when it hit me, that I got selected, the happiness was beyond what I had expected. I went on the IRC and thanked my mentors. All I knew was I had a project in hand and a long way ahead to perform beyond their expectations.

About the project

What is sTeam?

sTeam is a collaboration platform which helps people to share their documents, chat with them, have a look at their virtual workarea, and ease the sharing/developing in big groups. You can also look at the current development on the sTeam web interface here. It is still in the development phase, so please feel free to provide us with any ideas to improve. To know more about sTeam, please visit societyserver.

sTeam is completely built on pike programming language. To know more about pike programming, please visit Pike. If you already know about pike, and are good at it, please visit Fossasia’s IRC channel #fossasia and ask for tasks/bugs on this project to solve right away. If you are looking for something other than sTeam, FOSSASIA has a wide range of projects in various fields, and also welcomes any new project ideas.

My part of the project

I would like people to know the kind of work that I am doing currently for sTeam and show them how interesting it is to develop for it.

My project is to develop the command line tools to ease the work for the developers, and people who choose to work with command line, over a web interface.

These tools include,

Exporting your documents to your Github repository with just a command.

Importing document from Github right into sTeam for people to see.

A easy to use debug client that helps you while developing for this platform, or to see the various documents/containers you have in which room, move them, copy them, use them, all with commands similar to the Linux command line.

A way of to edit your documents directly with command line editors, without having to go to the web, type in the url, clicking on a document, and then finally editing it.

Chat with your friends/group members over the IRC.

and more being added to the list….(Please contact us if you have any)

These tools are already built up, but with more development, they will be very efficient and easy to use commands which a normal user can type in and get things done, and this is where my part comes in.

For some of these tools, which are already built, some development is needed. While some other tools, I have to develop by myself and enhance the command line usage for sTeam.

These are few of the commands with their screenshots to help you understand exactly what these tools are meant for,

The sTeam debug client

The editing documents client,

and edit the document in a simple command-line editor (used vim here),

Exporting documents from sTeam to git (version-wise)

Importing documents to sTeam from git (version-wise)

If you really like what I am doing, or are interested in developing for sTeam, please join our IRC channel #fossasia or join [email protected] .

If you are looking for some other project, FOSSASIA has a lot of projects to be worked on. Please visit FOSSASIA for more info.